THE BRIDGE

tag Jafco

Japanese blockchain startup Nayuta raises $1.3M round for “Lightning Network for IoT”

SHARE:

See the original story in Japanese. Based in the western Japanese city of Fukuoka, Nayuta has been offering new technologies that combine IoT (Internet of Things) and blockchain. The company announced on Thursday that it has raised 140 million yen (about $1.3 million) in a seed round from Tokyo-based VC firm Jafco (TSE:8595) and a single unnamed individual investor. For the Fukuoka company which had been running on bootstrap mode relying on its two founders’ resources, this is the first financial injection from investors. Using the funds, the company will be focused on developing “the 2nd layer technologies” and related applications. Named from the Sanskrit word meaning novemdecillion, Nayuta was founded back in March of 2015 by its CEO Kenichi Kurimoto who had been working on development of SoC (System on Chip) and research of software algorithm for LSI (large scale integration) circuits. The company has been dedicated to developing blockchain technologies (especially around public blockchain) for actual use in the real world. Blockchain is under the spotlight as a scheme for developing decentralized platforms. The concept is surely good but it still has various problems to solve for actual use, such as requiring users to wait 10 minutes on…

Nayuta’s founder and CEO Kenichi Kurimoto
Image credit: Masaru Ikeda

See the original story in Japanese.

Based in the western Japanese city of Fukuoka, Nayuta has been offering new technologies that combine IoT (Internet of Things) and blockchain. The company announced on Thursday that it has raised 140 million yen (about $1.3 million) in a seed round from Tokyo-based VC firm Jafco (TSE:8595) and a single unnamed individual investor. For the Fukuoka company which had been running on bootstrap mode relying on its two founders’ resources, this is the first financial injection from investors. Using the funds, the company will be focused on developing “the 2nd layer technologies” and related applications.

Named from the Sanskrit word meaning novemdecillion, Nayuta was founded back in March of 2015 by its CEO Kenichi Kurimoto who had been working on development of SoC (System on Chip) and research of software algorithm for LSI (large scale integration) circuits. The company has been dedicated to developing blockchain technologies (especially around public blockchain) for actual use in the real world.

Blockchain is under the spotlight as a scheme for developing decentralized platforms. The concept is surely good but it still has various problems to solve for actual use, such as requiring users to wait 10 minutes on average to confirm a transaction, needing to lower the dealing cost to enable micropayments and the maximum capacity of seven transactions per second, among others. Until these problems are solved, blockchain is unlikely to support massive IoT and social infrastructures.

As one of the solutions, US-based Blockstream and other brockchain startups have succeeded in enabling rapidly-processable end-to-end micropayments services by developing Lightning Network technologies. Leveraging Kurimoto’s background, Nayuta specializes in developing the 2nd Layer technologies for IoT products along with the Lightning Network concept, planning to develop the necessary utility tools for every app in partnership with user companies. The company has unveiled that it is in potential partnership talks with a certain leading company, but Kurimoto says they will leverage the funds and focus more on acquiring additional partners and engineers.

While Nayuta had been operating based out of co-working spaces like Tenjin Color in Fukuoka as well as Finolab in Tokyo, the company will soon set up an independent office space so that their current and future employees can work more comfortably and conveniently. However, the company says it is flexible about where its engineers will work and where to hire developers.

Nayuta recently won the runner-up at the MUFG Digital Accelerator 2nd Batch Demo Day.

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

Nayuta won the runner-up at the MUFG Digital Accelerator 2nd Batch Demo Day.
Image credit: Masaru Ikeda

AdAsia Holdings raises $12M from Jafco to expand ad and marketing platform into Japan, Korea

SHARE:

See the original story in Japanese. AdAsia Holdings, offering video ad network and influencer marketing platform based in Southeast Asia, announced on Wednesday that it had raised $12 million from JAFCO Asia in its series A round. AdAsia Holdings was founded in April 2016 by Kosuke Sogo and Otohiko Koizumi. Prior to the startup, Sogo was successively appointed to CEO of MicroAd’s local subsidiaries in Southeast Asian countries while Kozutsumi was involved in the overseas business development of Japanese ad network startup Nobot (which was purchased by Mediba, an affiliate of KDDI in 2011) and an experienced COO of the Vietnamese local subsidiary of MicroAd. This announcement means that the firm succeeded in large-scale funding within one year after its foundation. AdAsia Holdings has been providing various ad services based on Southeast Asia: AdAsia Digital Platform having programmatic buying (data-driven automated ad inventory buying) and report management function, AdAsia Ad Network binding up local media in Southeast Asia, CastAsia acting as a matching platform for advertisers and influencers, as well as an online media site named Moments undertaking video production or showcasing past products. See also: AdAsia unveils ad network and management tool, enables programmatic buying for Asia Japanese AdTech experts to…

The core members of the AdAsia Holdings team

See the original story in Japanese.

AdAsia Holdings, offering video ad network and influencer marketing platform based in Southeast Asia, announced on Wednesday that it had raised $12 million from JAFCO Asia in its series A round.

AdAsia Holdings was founded in April 2016 by Kosuke Sogo and Otohiko Koizumi. Prior to the startup, Sogo was successively appointed to CEO of MicroAd’s local subsidiaries in Southeast Asian countries while Kozutsumi was involved in the overseas business development of Japanese ad network startup Nobot (which was purchased by Mediba, an affiliate of KDDI in 2011) and an experienced COO of the Vietnamese local subsidiary of MicroAd. This announcement means that the firm succeeded in large-scale funding within one year after its foundation.

AdAsia Holdings’ service menu (Click to enlarge)
Image credit: AdAsia Holdings

AdAsia Holdings has been providing various ad services based on Southeast Asia: AdAsia Digital Platform having programmatic buying (data-driven automated ad inventory buying) and report management function, AdAsia Ad Network binding up local media in Southeast Asia, CastAsia acting as a matching platform for advertisers and influencers, as well as an online media site named Moments undertaking video production or showcasing past products.

See also:

Launched in Singapore and Bangkok, the firm currently has developed its business into seven cities in Southeast Asian countries, namely Jakarta, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Taipei and Phnom Penh, serving major online media or clients in each city. The number of total staffers is 80 and the half of these engaged in system development or creative work at the Bangkok subsidiary. In the future, the firm plans to shift the center of the system development to Vietnam where many highly skilled engineers live.

Sogo explains the reason for fundraising this time:

There was no urgent need for funding, since we achieved a primary surplus in the first year. But considering listing in the future, we have to procure capital from external sources sooner or later. Feeling ready to go upscale with the business, we decided to receive an injection of funds from JAFCO at this time.

AdAsia Holdings’ Bangkok office
Image credit: AdAsia Holdings

With this funding, the firm revealed that it is going to develop its business into East Asia from Southeast Asia. Concretely, the targeted region will probably encompass Japan and Korea. It was a blank area in the Southeast Asian market regarding the business field AdAsia Holdings deal with. As seeking the next market, Sogo noticed that the East Asian market is also undeveloped although appearing at first glance to have players gradually on the increase.

However, it is not difficult to imagine that AdAsia will compete with other video ad network pioneering in this field such as AppVador, Lodeo, Open8 or App-CM. Tokyo-based Withfluence, which recently announced a business tie-up with the leading Thai telecommunication company True, also can be called a competitor in terms of being an influencer marketing platform focusing on Asia. This tendency clearly shows the increase in market awareness and demand.

In the future, AdAsia Holdings plans to introduce a budget optimization or an auto-operation method utilizing AI (artificial intelligence) into entire platforms, and to maximize the ROI (return on investment) performance of planning for advertising publication or buying.

As Sogo mentioning the listing of its stock in the future, the team enhancement is progressing steadily. He implied that some of the big names or aces in the Japanese advertising industry have joined the team, but could not say who at this time due to various reasons. I will try interviewing again as occasion serves.

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

Japan’s Quoine secures $16M series B to become Asia’s largest bitcoin exchange of exchanges

SHARE:

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo- / Singapore-based Quoine, the startup offering a bitcoin exchange and other cryptocurrency-related services, announced today that it has secured a total of $16 million in a series B round. Following a series A round when the company raised $2 million from several angel investors back in December of 2014, this round was led by Japanese investment company Jafco (TSE:8595) with participation from an unnamed VC firm and several unnamed businesses. Since this round is not closed yet, the company said that it may additionally raise up to $4 million from potential business partners. The latest funding was obviously swayed by the perspective that the demand for bitcoin will grow exponentially upon Japanese parliament’s recent enactment of a bill for regulating cryptocurrency exchanges. While Mario Gomez-Lozada, who had been formerly served as CEO since the launch of Quoine, later became CTO to focus on system development, and the company named co-founder Kariya Kayamori as a new CEO earlier this year. Prior to launching Quoine, Kayamori had been involved in developing businesses at Japanese leading companies like Softbank and Mitsubishi Corporation. In addition, the company has changed its structure between their Singaporean and Japanese business…

international-bitcoin

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo- / Singapore-based Quoine, the startup offering a bitcoin exchange and other cryptocurrency-related services, announced today that it has secured a total of $16 million in a series B round. Following a series A round when the company raised $2 million from several angel investors back in December of 2014, this round was led by Japanese investment company Jafco (TSE:8595) with participation from an unnamed VC firm and several unnamed businesses. Since this round is not closed yet, the company said that it may additionally raise up to $4 million from potential business partners.

kariya-kayamori-picture-240x240
Quoine CEO Kariya Kayamori

The latest funding was obviously swayed by the perspective that the demand for bitcoin will grow exponentially upon Japanese parliament’s recent enactment of a bill for regulating cryptocurrency exchanges. While Mario Gomez-Lozada, who had been formerly served as CEO since the launch of Quoine, later became CTO to focus on system development, and the company named co-founder Kariya Kayamori as a new CEO earlier this year. Prior to launching Quoine, Kayamori had been involved in developing businesses at Japanese leading companies like Softbank and Mitsubishi Corporation. In addition, the company has changed its structure between their Singaporean and Japanese business entities where the Japanese company has now become the parent of its subsidiary in Singapore while the Singaporean entity used to be the parent to the Japanese one.

According to cryptocurrency portal Coinhills’ real-time ranking of global bitcoin exchanges in volume of transactions, Quoine is ranked in 7th place following Chinese six exchanges in a craze of speculation. This list obviously indicates Quoine being Japan’s largest bitcoin exchange followed by BtcBox and bitFlyer as well as one of the world’s leading bitcoin exchanges. Given that the annual amount of foreign-exchange(FX) trading in Japan has reached about $50 trillion, Kayamori predicts about 10% of these transactions being replaced by cryptocurrencies in the future. Quoine transacts bitcoins worth of $50 million a day, but he thinks it will be able to expand up to 100 times that of today.

bitcoin-exchange-ranking
The world’s top 10 bitcoin exchanges (as of 11am, June 20, 2016)
Image credit: Coinhills

But here the question of how and why did Quoine become ranked high in the transaction amount despite the fact that the company is not so famous among bitcoin exchanges in Japan may come to mind. The answer is their B2B2C(business-to-business-to-commerce)-focused business model where Quoine is offering backend engines for several other acting and upcoming bitcoin exchanges.

In Japan, many Internet service providers and online portal sites are offering online brokerage services for stock and FX tradings. However, due to cost efficiency as well as the need to secure the robustness and stability a typical financial platforms requires, many of them adopted systems from other online securities companies and such. Similar circumstances will be likely to happen in the bitcoin exchange industry as well, so Quoine wants to win these needs. Citing Kayamori’s words,

It’s an exchange of cryptocurrency exchanges, let’s say, we want to be somewhat like the cryptocurrency version of Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Quoine established a bitcoin exchange in Indonesia in October of 2014 in partnership with that country’s largest payments processor Indomog, while also expanding into other Asian markets. Their future focus is on Japan and Asia as well. The company claims that they want to be Asia’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by partnering with local cryptocurrency exchanges and other service providers holding many of the potential cryptocurrency users in the region.

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

Singapore / Japan space-debris removal startup Astroscale raises $35M in series B

SHARE:

See the original story in Japanese. Astroscale, a Singapore- / Tokyo-based startup developing satellites to remove space debris from Earth’s orbit, announced today that it has fundraised up to $35 million from Japanese government-backed investment fund Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ) and Jafco in a series B round. INCJ will undertake an investment worth up to $30 million while Jafco will invest $5 million from their fund raised from other several investors. The latest funding round is followed by securing a $7.7 million series A round back in February of 2015 where Jafco, Mistletoe as well as angel investors like Kotaro Yamagishi (Gree co-founder), Kenji Kasahara (Mixi co-founder), Shuhei Morofuji (SMS founder) and Kiyoshi Nishikawa (Netage founder) paid in. At the beginning of the press conference in Tokyo today, Japanese astronaut Naoko Yamazaki made a keynote speech to elaborate the danger of space debris which she experienced through her space shuttle Discovery mission STS-131. Ground-based radar telescopes can detect the Earth’s debris down to 10 centimeters in size so that a space shuttle or the International Space Station (ISS) can be warned to avoid space debris. However, space debris are so fast (circling the Earth at a velocity of…

astroscale-tsuchida-yamazaki-okada
From the left: Shigeyuki Tsuchida (Senior Executive Officer, Innovation Network Corporation of Japan), Naoko Yamazaki (astronaut), Mitsunobu Okada (CEO, Astroscale)

See the original story in Japanese.

Astroscale, a Singapore- / Tokyo-based startup developing satellites to remove space debris from Earth’s orbit, announced today that it has fundraised up to $35 million from Japanese government-backed investment fund Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ) and Jafco in a series B round. INCJ will undertake an investment worth up to $30 million while Jafco will invest $5 million from their fund raised from other several investors. The latest funding round is followed by securing a $7.7 million series A round back in February of 2015 where Jafco, Mistletoe as well as angel investors like Kotaro Yamagishi (Gree co-founder), Kenji Kasahara (Mixi co-founder), Shuhei Morofuji (SMS founder) and Kiyoshi Nishikawa (Netage founder) paid in.

At the beginning of the press conference in Tokyo today, Japanese astronaut Naoko Yamazaki made a keynote speech to elaborate the danger of space debris which she experienced through her space shuttle Discovery mission STS-131. Ground-based radar telescopes can detect the Earth’s debris down to 10 centimeters in size so that a space shuttle or the International Space Station (ISS) can be warned to avoid space debris. However, space debris are so fast (circling the Earth at a velocity of about 7.5 kilometers per second) that even tiny space debris smaller than 10 centimeters and larger than 1 centimeter, which cannot be detected with ground-based radar telescopes, may greatly damage rockets, artificial satellites and the ISS.

Receiving sponsorship from Japanese cutting tool manufacturer OSG (TSE:6136), Astroscale started developing a space debris detection satellite called IDEA OSG 1 last year, which aims to detect small space debris which cannot be detected with ground-based radar telescopes. To remove space debris, they will develop capturing satellites called ADRAS 01 which is to use lightweight but sticky adhesives to capture space debris which is relatively smaller and located at a relatively lower altitude, and then reenter the atmosphere to burn the captured debris out. For ones larger or located at a higher altitude, these will be decongested from a heavy traffic orbit rather than being removed because it will require higher energy consumption to move them. Capturing satellites are to incorporate advance technologies from Japanese ultra-microsatellite series Hodoyoshi, have an ion engine, hydrogen peroxide solution-based attitude control system and ESP (Electric Solid Propellent) thrusters.

astroscale-two-satellites
From the left: Space-debris capturing satellite ADRAS 1, space-debris detection satellite IDEA OSG 1

Mitsunobu Okada, CEO of Astroscale, emphasized that his company has been receiving cooperation from 11 laboratories at 9 universities, two technical colleges, JAXA (Japan Aerospace eXploration Agency) and 50 other private-sector companies including machine manufacturing company Yuki Precision. Okada named a team of these people involved in this Space Sweepers project, and stated his aspiration that they all unite together to lead the project to success.

Astroscale plans to launch the first IDEA OSG 1 satellite from Russia between 2016 and early 2017. Following that, they will launch ADRAS 01 in the first half of 2018 to begin conducting proof of concept (PoC) tests. Represented by Japanese space startup Axelspace, the upcoming trend of satellite business will be shifting to satellite constellation, which allows users to observe many parts of the planet without timing constraints. Astroscale wants to monetize by acquiring these satellite business operators as clients and receiving entrusted tasks such as removing failed satellites or securing orbits.

See also:

The Space Sweepers team
The Space Sweepers team

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

Tokyo-based reservation platform TableSolution lands $1.6M, seeks Asia expansion

SHARE:

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup Vesper, developer of TableSolution and BeautySolution, reservation and customer management platforms for restaurants and beauty salons, announced earlier this month that they have raised 200 million yen (approximately $1.6 million) in funding from Japanese investment firm Jafco as well as angel investors. With this latest funding, Vesper is looking to carry out the necessary system development for global expansion and strengthen their sales personnel. In January of this year,Vesper CEO and founder Yu Taniguchi told us they were moving towards completing the last of their then 1,200 total installments of the company’s services with large scale businesses including Hotel Nikko Tokyo and others. [1] Since then approximately half a year has passed, and while the current number of total installations is not open to the public at this time, average installations of the service for restaurant use would seem to have increased by 27 times since January. In the same period of six months, restaurants which have adopted TableSolution have seen an increase in reservations in orders of 33 times compared to last year, with number of guests increasing about 32 times. According to Taniguchi total account cancellations so far are close…

vesper-yu-taniguchi
Vesper founder and CEO Yu Taniguchi

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based startup Vesper, developer of TableSolution and BeautySolution, reservation and customer management platforms for restaurants and beauty salons, announced earlier this month that they have raised 200 million yen (approximately $1.6 million) in funding from Japanese investment firm Jafco as well as angel investors. With this latest funding, Vesper is looking to carry out the necessary system development for global expansion and strengthen their sales personnel.

In January of this year,Vesper CEO and founder Yu Taniguchi told us they were moving towards completing the last of their then 1,200 total installments of the company’s services with large scale businesses including Hotel Nikko Tokyo and others. [1]

Since then approximately half a year has passed, and while the current number of total installations is not open to the public at this time, average installations of the service for restaurant use would seem to have increased by 27 times since January.

tablesolution_screenshot

In the same period of six months, restaurants which have adopted TableSolution have seen an increase in reservations in orders of 33 times compared to last year, with number of guests increasing about 32 times. According to Taniguchi total account cancellations so far are close to zero. In fact he says, with the exception restaurants using the service actually closing down, account termination has been highly unlikely.

So, what exactly are the merits of this kind of online reservation system for a restaurant?

Restaurants using TableSolution are able to offer three different ways to take reservations: regular telephone reservations with online customer management, online reservations through the restaurant’s website, and telephone reservations using automated voice answering system.

Taniguchi provided data from one user case in which a biergarten style restaurant using TableCheck saw a 150% increase in reservation guests compared to before when they were only accepting telephone reservations. [2] Furthermore, they saw an additional 11% increase when adopting TableSolution’s automated voice answering reservation service which was released around January this year.

With TableSolution’s store tending structure, one advantage is that even if the phone line is tied up when another reservation call comes in, the answering system will accept reservations automatically. The system connects to the telephone via Twillio, helping to prevent missed opportunities to take reservations during busy hours.

As a result, this restaurant was able to increase their reservations through a combination of being able to take new reservations even during non-business hours and reducing reservations lost due to tied up phone lines at peak business hours. Of course it’s important to keep in mind that this is the only user case study that has been provided by Vesper, which may or may not tell the whole story, but it does seem worth acknowledging that a restaurant has actually been able to use this system to favorable results.

One of the biggest factors affecting businesses that use online services geared towards restaurants is of course the level of difficulty involved in adopting these systems. However if you observe the advancement of competitors such as other booking management services and tablet-based POS (point of sale) cash register systems, those challenges may very soon be a thing of the past. Surely this is one effect of the sudden widespread use of smart devices in business.

beautysolution_screenshot

Regarding future plans Taniguchi says they will be focusing mainly on global expansion and extending their services to include options such as payment functions and more. Moving into the international market, they are looking particularly at Taiwan and other Asian countries. Being a considerably international company in terms of its employees, as well as Taniguchi himself being born and raised overseas, there doesn’t seem to be any strong concern regarding cultural barriers.

On Vesper’s website they’ve published their 8-point company policy. Personally I like the first one the most: “Act like there’s no tomorrow.”

The competition between Japan based reservation and booking services, as well the growth of these companies is becoming something quite interesting to see.

Translated by Connor Kirk
Edited by Masaru Ikeda


  1. This number includes total combined installations of both of TableSolution and BeautySolution.
  2. TableCheck is the name of the service on the user side, as opposed to TableSolution which is what restaurants see.

Japanese photo collage app Papelook raises $1.1 million from Jafco

SHARE:

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Papelook, the company behind a photo collage app under the same name, announced today that it has raised 120 million yen (or $1.12 million) from Japanese investment firm Jafco. Since its launch of an iOS app in 2011 followed by an Android version in march of 2013, the company has acquired 13 million downloads in total to date worldwide. See also: With 10M downloads, Japan’s Papelook app knows how to get the girls With 4 million downloads for iPhone, popular Japanese collage app hits Android [Video] In our recent interview with Papelook CEO Ichiro Ozawa, he told us about their user demographics: We understand 96% of our users are female. we had no ideas about user demographics because our app require no user sign-up process. But our recent survey showed us “moms” account for 35% of our entire user base, so we are providing more stickers designed for moms. While there are only about 6.6 million downloads in Japan alone, they are trying to increase active users rather than downloads in country. Ozawa continued: Looking at the overseas markets, we have many downloads from Thailand and Korea in addition to North America. We’ll…

papelook_featuredimage

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Papelook, the company behind a photo collage app under the same name, announced today that it has raised 120 million yen (or $1.12 million) from Japanese investment firm Jafco.

Since its launch of an iOS app in 2011 followed by an Android version in march of 2013, the company has acquired 13 million downloads in total to date worldwide.

See also:

In our recent interview with Papelook CEO Ichiro Ozawa, he told us about their user demographics:

Papelook's CEO Ichiro Ozawa
Papelook’s CEO Ichiro Ozawa

We understand 96% of our users are female. we had no ideas about user demographics because our app require no user sign-up process. But our recent survey showed us “moms” account for 35% of our entire user base, so we are providing more stickers designed for moms.

While there are only about 6.6 million downloads in Japan alone, they are trying to increase active users rather than downloads in country. Ozawa continued:

Looking at the overseas markets, we have many downloads from Thailand and Korea in addition to North America. We’ll be more focused on increasing downloads in the overseas market. We’ll be targeting the Chinese market next. […] Our localization efforts are yet limited in translating user interface. But because it will be difficult for Japanese designers to create stickers so that overseas users are willing to use them, we’ll be trying to encourage global designers to create their stickers for Papelook. We are thinking to launch a service where global designers can sell their stickers as well as real products.

Papelook's geographical distribution of users
Papelook’s geographical distribution in terms of users

Evernote has an e-commerce outlet called Evernote Market selling their products. Similarly, Papelook wants to gain a brand value by building a user community and developing analog products. Ozawa explained:

We will start an online printing service. If you create a photo collage using our app, you will be able to print it out via photocopiers at convenience stores around the country, such as Seven Eleven, Lawson, Family Mart, and Sunkus. New year’s card prints using photo collages will be also available in year-end. […] We will try to have our users see we can provide more than just an app through organizing user events focused on moms.

While Papelook will be more focused on adverting sales and service planning from now, we understand that they will use the funds raised at this time to strengthen sales forces rather than an engineering team.

Japan’s e-commerce company Locondo raises $4.6 million in series C round

SHARE:

Japanese footwear e-commerce company Locondo announced last week that it had raised 500 million yen (or $4.6 million) in a series C round from Japanese investment firm Jafco. The company uses the funds to fulfill their logistics needs and relocate their headquarters to Shibuya, Tokyo. Locondo was launched in October 2010 with 76 million yen ($760,000) funding from Rocket Internet. Since its launch in February 2011, their e-commerce site has acquired 600,000 users and over 40% of their users buy at least one pair of footwear a year via the platform. Annual shipping revenue reached 5 billion yen ($50 million) last year. Locondo fundraised 700 million (or $7 million) from Lead Capital Management (LCM), and Itochu Technology Ventures (ITV). in October 2011, and subsequently fundraised 600 million ($6.3 million) from Mizuho Capital, Neostella Capital, Excite Japan, in addition again from LCM and ITV. Beginning October, the company started diversifying its lineups beyond footwear to sportswear and home interiors as well as enhancing its promotional efforts, including setting up an official Line account. Via Venture Now

locondo

Japanese footwear e-commerce company Locondo announced last week that it had raised 500 million yen (or $4.6 million) in a series C round from Japanese investment firm Jafco. The company uses the funds to fulfill their logistics needs and relocate their headquarters to Shibuya, Tokyo.

Locondo was launched in October 2010 with 76 million yen ($760,000) funding from Rocket Internet. Since its launch in February 2011, their e-commerce site has acquired 600,000 users and over 40% of their users buy at least one pair of footwear a year via the platform. Annual shipping revenue reached 5 billion yen ($50 million) last year.

Locondo fundraised 700 million (or $7 million) from Lead Capital Management (LCM), and Itochu Technology Ventures (ITV). in October 2011, and subsequently fundraised 600 million ($6.3 million) from Mizuho Capital, Neostella Capital, Excite Japan, in addition again from LCM and ITV.

Beginning October, the company started diversifying its lineups beyond footwear to sportswear and home interiors as well as enhancing its promotional efforts, including setting up an official Line account.

Via Venture Now

Online cram school startup Aoi.Co. raises $1.2 million from Jafco

SHARE:

Tokyo-based Aoi.Co., the startup that operates a live-streamed onine lecuture service for junior high students, announced today that it has fundraised 120 million yen ($1.2 million) from Japanese investment firm Jafco. Aoi.co. was born out of the fifth batch of KDDI’s incubation program Mugen Labo back in January. Aoi Zemi, their service, is focused on providing informative live programming as well as opportunities to interact with other users by sharing something they are calling ‘timelines’. Live-streaming is available for free, but you will be charged for watching recorded lecture programs. Aoi.Co has acquired over 3,000 students as users to date and unveiled that the entrance exam passing rate of users for their preferred universities has reached 86.3%. The firm plans to use the funds to strengthen its system development capability and introduce a learning state monitoring app for parents in September. via TechCrunch Japan

aoi-zemi_screenshot

Tokyo-based Aoi.Co., the startup that operates a live-streamed onine lecuture service for junior high students, announced today that it has fundraised 120 million yen ($1.2 million) from Japanese investment firm Jafco. Aoi.co. was born out of the fifth batch of KDDI’s incubation program Mugen Labo back in January.

Aoi Zemi, their service, is focused on providing informative live programming as well as opportunities to interact with other users by sharing something they are calling ‘timelines’. Live-streaming is available for free, but you will be charged for watching recorded lecture programs.

Aoi.Co has acquired over 3,000 students as users to date and unveiled that the entrance exam passing rate of users for their preferred universities has reached 86.3%. The firm plans to use the funds to strengthen its system development capability and introduce a learning state monitoring app for parents in September.

via TechCrunch Japan

News curation startup Gunosy secures $12M funding from three Japanese companies

SHARE:

Bloomberg reported earlier today that Tokyo-based Gunosy, the company behind the curation news app under the same name, has secured funds worth 1.2 billion yen ($12 million) from Japanese telco KDDI (TSE:9433), investment firm Jafco, and B Dash Ventures. This follows their previous funds worth $12 million from KDDI back in March. Regarding the money raised back in March, the company used over 80% of it to broadcast a TV commercial to increase penetration of their news app among Japanese consumers. They recently launched the app in the US and UK markets over the last few months, and it is told that they plan to use the funds raised at this time to intensify their global promotion efforts. In this sector of the Japanese market, we’ve seen a number of competitors like SmartNews, NewsPick, Antenna, and Kamelio. In the US market, we’ve also seen that Flipboard surpassed 85 million users last year and acquired news reader app Zite from CNN back in March. In our recent interview with the company’s co-CEO Shinji Kimura, he told us that they are targeting 80 million installs outside of Japan, and 100 million worldwide in three years.

gunosy2

Bloomberg reported earlier today that Tokyo-based Gunosy, the company behind the curation news app under the same name, has secured funds worth 1.2 billion yen ($12 million) from Japanese telco KDDI (TSE:9433), investment firm Jafco, and B Dash Ventures. This follows their previous funds worth $12 million from KDDI back in March.

Regarding the money raised back in March, the company used over 80% of it to broadcast a TV commercial to increase penetration of their news app among Japanese consumers. They recently launched the app in the US and UK markets over the last few months, and it is told that they plan to use the funds raised at this time to intensify their global promotion efforts.

In this sector of the Japanese market, we’ve seen a number of competitors like SmartNews, NewsPick, Antenna, and Kamelio. In the US market, we’ve also seen that Flipboard surpassed 85 million users last year and acquired news reader app Zite from CNN back in March.

In our recent interview with the company’s co-CEO Shinji Kimura, he told us that they are targeting 80 million installs outside of Japan, and 100 million worldwide in three years.

Japanese personal accounting startup Money Forward raises $5 million

SHARE:

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Money Forward, the startup behind the personal accounting app of the same name, announced today that it has raised 500 million yen ($5 million) from Japanese investment company Jafco. Money Forward provides online personal accounting for individuals, allowing them to easily manage their daily expenses by integrating with their bank passbooks and credit purchase history with information scraped from their web bank and credit accounts. The service is also available for desktop, as well as iOS and Android platforms. The company also announced that it will launch a cloud-based accounting service for individual and corporate users, and it will also start publishing an online newsletter. The service launched back in December of 2012 in beta, and subsequently launched its official version back in July of 2013. The company’s CEO Yosuke Tsuji told us that their service has acquired over 100 million accounting records from users, up 43% on average in the last several months [1]. He explained: We launched an asset simulation tool called ‘Yoso-Q’ this past July, and it has been getting lots of attention from our users. Its daily active users are much higher than we expected. When we look at…

moneyforward_screenshot

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Money Forward, the startup behind the personal accounting app of the same name, announced today that it has raised 500 million yen ($5 million) from Japanese investment company Jafco.

Money Forward provides online personal accounting for individuals, allowing them to easily manage their daily expenses by integrating with their bank passbooks and credit purchase history with information scraped from their web bank and credit accounts. The service is also available for desktop, as well as iOS and Android platforms. The company also announced that it will launch a cloud-based accounting service for individual and corporate users, and it will also start publishing an online newsletter.

The service launched back in December of 2012 in beta, and subsequently launched its official version back in July of 2013. The company’s CEO Yosuke Tsuji told us that their service has acquired over 100 million accounting records from users, up 43% on average in the last several months [1]. He explained:

We launched an asset simulation tool called ‘Yoso-Q’ this past July, and it has been getting lots of attention from our users. Its daily active users are much higher than we expected. When we look at visiting frequency, almost 30% of our users who have registered their bank accounts on our service are using the simulation tool once every two days.

Their personalized credit card recommendation engine is especially popular among users. It proposes cards based on how much you pay on a monthly basis, or what kind of rewards you want to get. Their 60% of users are male, and 40% are female.

moneyforward_dataaccumulation
CHART: The growth of expense data collected from Money Forward users

Simplifying income tax reporting

Cloud-based accounting is a fierce space here in Japan, where Tokyo-based startup Freee is doing well in its user acquisition. According to Tsuji, Money Forward will be also getting into this space, launching a tax reporting tool later next month. It will simplifies your tax reporting tasks by scraping expenses from your bank accounts and sorting out automatically.

So what is his overall goal for Money Forward? He explains:

Along with the account aggregation technology, we’ll be providing various services for users including asset management and simulation for individuals, and cloud-based accounting for SMEs. When you have money management troubles, you find the answer at Money Forward. That’s what we’re aiming to be.

With the funds raised this time around, the company plans to hire more engineers in an effort to be a leading one-stop solution provider.

The startup was spun-off from Tokyo online stock brokerage Monex in 2012. It raised 100 million yen (over $1 million) back in March from several angel investors and WIT Corporation, a technology licensing organization under Waseda University.


  1. Not to be confused with user growth, of course.